Premier Equestrian

Hi Folks,

Sitting here listening to County Music. Unlike me, for this kind of music, I am generally a POP/Rock kinda guy. Anyway, I was looking at the site and noticed the lack of blog activity. Here I am, at the end of April 08. I hope you are well and thriving with the rising sap of springtime. It’s coming late this year, there is still snow on the hills. Speaking of snow, we had the greatest winter ever, over 50 feet of snow fell on my favorite ski resort. Oh well, I know you don’t want to read about SNOW! So let me say that the trees have blossomed and the tulips are as bright as Cinco de Mayo. Springtime is definitely my favorite season.

Premier Equestrian is as busy as ever. THANKS! to all of our friends and customers. We have a couple of major things in the works that you may want to hear about. First, We are excited to announce that Premier Equestrian was chosen to provide all Dressage equipment to the The Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games, Kentucky 2010. The games are being held at The Lexington Horse Park in Lexington. Look for the major announcements to come in the press. This is a big deal for us and confirms our company’s position as North America’s leading provider of Dressage Sporting Equipment. Yahoo! There will be a lot more to come regarding this.

So, in further news, Dover Saddlery has agreed to help us distribute our ProStride Arena Footing. Dover will offer their sales channels, via catalog and retail outlets, and Premier Equestrian will handle product fulfillment through Premier’s various national plant locations. This is another big deal for us! We are honored to have Dover Saddlery as a business partner. This is launching early summer so you definitely hear more abut this!

Please look at or web site and see all the new things we have. There are so many I would bore you trying to list them all! Thanks for stopping by and as always send me an email and let me know what you are doing! Happy Spring!!

Mark Neihart
CEO, Premier Equestrian

Hi there everybody,

February! What a grim month weather-wise. It seems the whole country is getting it’s share of the winter pound. Ice storms, blizzards, floods and snow. I hope everyone has managed to survive comfortably. Here in Utah we have had over 36 feet of snowfall at my favorite ski resort. (Solitude). Heavenly, I call it.

Well, this month has been a travel month. Heidi and I were out in Aiken, South Carolina to check up on some of our customers and to attend the Olympic Equestrian Team fund raiser held at Phillip Duttons place. The fund raiser was a great time where we got to see a lot of old friends and make a lot of new ones. Go Team! While we were in South Carolina we toured the beautiful Palmetto Bluffs community out near Hilton Head. The project is over 22,000 acres with a world class equestrian facility, riding trails, golf club, marina, community center, etc. Quite a place. They have installed our ProStride Arena Footing in the indoor and outdoor arenas then added Pyramid Arenas with Tower letters for a great touch. Looking good! I also had a chance to tour the SouthWest including Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. Just a bit of R&R before the spring. The desert is always tranquil this time of year. Not many people and the vast and lonely landscapes. I love it. Nice to get away for a while.

So anyway, we are back in the saddle, so to speak, and ramping up our yearly plans. A new catalog is underway and will be published by the end of March. Our paint booth is operational and we are now painting wood poles. Custom colors and stripes. Demand is high and we are amazed how many we are already painting. Thanks customers! There are a few other projects in the works which will roll out as the year progresses. Keep an eye out for some good things to happen.

As always, thank you. We are grateful for your presence in our lives. Send me an email and let me know what you are doing.

Mark Neihart
Premier Equestrian

Hello All…

So here we go…2008 and feeling great! The holidays were very good this year, Heidi and I actually had some time off. Time for the family and friends and some good long days on the ski slopes. The snow is still flying. We had some awesome storms here with about 60 inches added to the mountains.

We ended up the year with our Sundance Dressage Arena giveaway. The winner is Geoff Gurly from California. We wanted to have a big launch of our new Sundance Arena and WOW what a success. We had over 1000 entries into the contest and we were very happy to make the call to Geoff and tell him of his winnings. Geoff was very happy to be the winner and claims to have never won anything in his life. Congrats, Geoff.

So looking forward, we are installing a paint booth here and will soon be painting wood poles. We will be offering painted poles in 10 ft and 12 ft lengths plus we have 4″ diameter poles in the 12 ft lengths. Look for this product soon on our pole page.

Our next effort is to bring on wood jumps for those who prefer the traditional jump course. We are currently designing, building prototypes, and testing. After talking to many of our customers we found that there is still a demand for the old heavy wood jumps. This was kind of a surprise, I guess because when you get so close to something (like building lightweight jumps) it is hard to see the whole picture. Well, that is why we listen, intently, to our customers! The first designs in this line should be available by early march.

In other news…Heidi and I will be in Aiken, SC in February to visit the Phillip Dutton Eventing group. Phillip has agreed to participate in our Pro-Tips program (explanation below) and invited us out for a barn party and a tour. We will be filming Phillip doing a bit of training with some of his favorite training exercises. I have always loved the Carolina’s so I am looking forward to going.

Speaking of Pro-Tips. This program brings together top trainers who demonstrate some of their favorite training exercises using some of our favorite products. To date we have Walter Zettl, David O’Connor, Sally O’Connor and now Phillip Dutton. All of these professionals and their training tips will be available for free on our web site. This project should kick off in a couple of months. Keep an eye out for it!

Well, that’s it for this months update. As always I seek out your comments and always enjoy getting your emails. We all have a big year ahead of us, I wish you joy, luck, and love.

Mark Neihart
Premier Equestrian

Hello all! May the blessings of God be upon you and yours this Holiday season.

I finally have time for my December post. The phones are ringing off the hook, the email box is clogging up my processor, the snail mail box is stuffed full…what a great way to end the year. I am compelled to say Thank You to all who have helped make 2007 our best year yet! Thank you.

So Winter started with a bang. Snow across the entire country, even now ice storms are raging havoc on the Midwest. Here, in the high desert, we got pummeled with about 40 inches of snow over the weekend. If you have read any of my prior posts you know that I Love SNOW. Yes the ski season has started and all of us die-hards had a great weekend on the slopes. Still a bit slim in depth but a great start to the winter season.

Next month I will give you a hint of some of the new things we are doing. When our plans come together I think we will, again, set ourselves apart from our competitors (fine as they are) and take the art of equestrian sporting equipment to the next level.

This post is short for a reason! Back to work! Still, as you go through the busy day remember the purpose of our Christmas celebration. The symbolism contained within the birth of a child is renewal, life rising, and most of all a growing hope for the future.

Hello to all, May God bless you and keep you ever in his spirit. November is here. The high mountain dessert is ablaze with color, as the leaves blow madly around in the autumn winds. It’s time to cover the patio furniture and winterize the sprinkler system. It’s also time to dig out the ski gear; tune-ups and safety checks. Pray for snow!

So, it’s been another busy month here at Premier. We have launched our new Sundance Arena, to much success. It seems people never tire of good products at reasonable prices. We have sold out of our first production run and are busy making more. By the way if you haven’t noticed we are giving a Sundance Arena away FREE! as a promotion. You can sign up if you haven’t already, to do so go here: www.horsejumps.net/giveaway.html

This week we are releasing our Christmas catalog with some great savings for those in need. It’s our year-end clearance sale. If you are on our mailing list you should get yours in the next few weeks. If not and you want one just give us a call. Catalog production is always soooo stressful! A million details have to be managed, products, pricing, photos, and words. Heidi and I have been making catalogs for years and we still are amazed by the true effort it really takes. It’s a lot of work but when the piece comes off the press, smelling of fresh ink, man…it’s a great feeling. This is our first-ever seasonal catalog, I hope you like it.

Maybe you noticed we have updated our website. Julie and Heidi came up with the new winter look. Also we are reformatting some of the pages to make it easier to find stuff. When we started this out I never dreamed that we would have over 800 pages of website! Wow! More and more people are using our on-line store to make their purchases. I guess that’s good but I really like to talk to my customers. It would be a lonely world if everyone just used the Internet to communicate. (Here I am doing it!)

One more thing, this week is the Sage Creek Equestrian, Cowboy Poetry Festival in Heber Valley, Utah. Before all of you English riders glaze over by the thought of grown cowboys reciting open-country prose with a drawl let me tell you, it’s fun, entertaining, and unusual. Sage Creek Equestrian is where I shot the photos for the New Sundance Arena, absolutely beautiful! We will be up there with our trailer Wednesday, November 7. I’ll report back with the goings on.

Ok, there is my November update. One more thought, before we all get caught up in the Christmas and holiday rush let’s not forget Thanksgiving. Gratitude is probably the most important feeling we can have. Being thankful and having gratitude is at the seat of being at peace.

Mark Neihart
Premier Equestrian

I thought that I could update this new blog on a timely basis and then I look and it is already October 18. Whew! Where is all the time going? Onward.

Let’s see, the skies are turning gray here as winter slowly pries away autumn’s grip. Snow peaked mountains tease us skiers, just another month until Solitude opens. YEA! By the way if you are ever in SLC this winter and want to ski, call us up! Customer relations is a very important part of our business.

Around the office we are gearing up for the winter equestrian shows. Busy as usual, even with all the changes. Speaking of shows, Devon picked up our new Brentina Arena for their dressage competitions this year. Look for pictures on our events/news page. Devon replaced their well-worn Blok Arena from Equine Systems. This is a trend we are seeing more and more as we continue to innovate in the Dressage Arena market-space.

We have released our new Sundance Arena. This is the beginning of our injection molding process. I don’t want to bore you with technical stuff so I will just say the Sundance Arena is the best product so far AND costs a great deal less for our customers. Check it out here www.horsejumps.net/pages/sundance.html

Also, for the Hunters and Jumpers we are planning on offering wood jumps starting the first of next year. Look for schooling standards to start and then we will be expanding to include all kinds of fun and useful standards, gates, and such.

Regarding the video projects we have going; The HealthyStride video is almost done and will be released in a couple months. If you know about HealthyStride then you are probably excited. If you don’t, just know that there is more than one way to shoe a horse. Check them out here www.healthy-stride.com

Ok, now I feel victory over time. I have updated the October blog. As usual drop me a line if you have need. Good Harvest to you and happy Halloween!

Mark Neihart

September 2007 View from the top-

September is here. The summer is now past while still lingering with hot days but cooler nights, welcome. The kids are back in school, all the tuition checks have been pulled from hidden accounts, new clothes, computers, and cars. The cycle continues.

Here at Premier we have been busy as usual. We have many things in the works. First, we are constructing our new Premier Equestrian Catalog. It is a major endeavor with the first step being a review of our extensive product line. We have designed a number of new Jumping products using some new materials for color. We have updated our Flower Box line with boxes that break down for easy shipping.

We have also updated our Pyramid arena cone making it stronger and less expensive and we are releasing a new dressage arena called The Sundance Arena. The Pyramid and the Sundance are using an injection molding process that significantly improves durability and performance.

Once all that is done then we can do our photo shoot. I am a photographer so the job falls in my court. The shoot is usually about four full days. This years shoot was no different except that we had a ground crew to help set up the products so I could focus on getting great pictures. For those who care, I am using a Nikon D-50 with various lenses, shooting in raw format for amazing flexibility. I was toying with HDR (high dynamic range) but the technique didn’t suit the product shoot. The bottom line is we got some great photos worthy of our products reputation. The new catalog will be out in time for our spring mailing.

Another major project this summer is a new video featuring Jim Crew’s farrier techniques. Our sister company Dancing Deer, LLC is producing this one in cooperation with Jim and his son Brandon. The video introduces the viewer to Healthy Stride, Jim and Brandon’s holistic methods to horse shoeing. These guys are literally fixing lame horses in one or two shoeings. I know this sounds ridiculous but having spent the last 6 months with these guys I can say it is true and there is a new hope for horse owners with common lameness problems. The video is scheduled for release November 1st.

Speaking of video, still another project is our Pro-Tips DVD. This DVD will feature prominent trainers showing their favorite training exercises, of course they will be using Premier Equestrian products during their demonstrations. We just filmed Walter Zettl showing the proper use of cavaletti. The other trainers include Bob and Debbi McDonald, David O-Conner, and Hap Hanson. The project is scheduled for release next spring and should be an entertaining and educational romp through dressage, jumping, and ground work.

As I mentioned, Walter Zettl was in Salt Lake City last month. He came in with Pat and Linda Parelli for the Parelli Natural Horsemanship seminar at the Salt Lake County Equestrian Center. Walter is working with the Parelli’s teaching them classical dressage. Both Pat and Linda are eager students and both share Walter’s passion for the well being of the horse. It is a great partnership and an important link between the English and Western riding disciplines.

While Walter was here we filmed him presenting his new product The Walter Zettl Circle Points. This is a method Walter developed to help riders perfect their circles. Every dressage rider knows that the circle is the basis for all the other movements. Perfect the circle and perfect the shoulder-fore, shoulder-in, pirouettes, etc. This is exciting for us as we will be the exclusive distributor for the Walter Zettl Circle Points. The product will come with the DVD and the equipment needed to outfit the dressage arena. Look for this around November.

The last major project I will talk about is our websites, DressageArena.net and HorseJumps.net. We are undergoing a major overhaul of both sites plus our shopping cart. Our goals here are to make the on-line experience easier, more informative, and relevant to our customers needs. Having grown so quickly over the last few years it has been difficult to keep up with everything. One of the upgrades will be video clips on the sites to demonstrate our products and to entertain the masses. This is happening as of this writing and will be complete within 90 days.

So, Summer is over and we are looking forward to the winter equestrian season. We are as busy as ever attending to our customers and their needs. As always I am interested in what you may have to say. Send me an email at Mark@PremierEquestrian.com or respond to this post and let me know how you are doing.

Mark Neihart
CEO
Premier Equestrian